Broadly: The Legacy of Robert Spitzer, Psychiatrist Who De-Pathologized Homosexuality

Dr. Robert Spritzer, the physician responsible for the 1973 declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, died on Friday, December 25, 2015. Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had considered homosexuality pathological. Their Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), originally published in 1952, is the widely respected diagnostic tool for mental health providers in the United States. It was in the DSM that several normal human qualities, including homosexuality, were portrayed as disorders and ailments rather than normal, natural human behavior. [...]

Dr. Ronald Bayer is a professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. "If [you were] homosexual and [felt] deeply distressed about it, that was a psychiatric diagnosis that was treatable by psychiatry," he said in an interview Broadly, adding that this thinking also eventually evolved. "[Spitzer] was deeply involved in [asking], 'What are the criteria used to define a mental illness? Is it simply subjective distress?' If a person felt distressed about being black, we wouldn't say, 'Well, maybe we can turn them into a white person... The African American Civil Rights Movement played a significant role shaping the discourse at that time," Dr. Bayer explained. [...]

Spitzer's advocacy culminated with the release of the new diagnostic manual, DSM III. Not only was homosexuality declassified, but neurosis itself was removed, which challenged the status quo of mid-twentieth century mental health medicine. "[It] was a huge watermark. Finally, in DSM III, they actually eliminated the concept of neurosis as a conceptual framework for psychiatric disorders, which was a central contribution of psychoanalytic thought," said Dr. Bayard, noting that this constituted a remarkable rupture in dominant thinking a the time. "Psychoanalysis was the dominant paradigm in psychiatry through the 1950s and 60s. Every major school that taught psychology was chaired by people with psychoanalytic training."

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Financial Times: Why there will never be a Trump in today’s Europe

The cliché is that polarisation, extreme inequality and fake news et cetera are problems plaguing the west. In fact, they are, above all, problems plaguing the US. Whereas western Europe just has a bad cold, the US has caught influenza (with Donald Trump as a symptom, not the cause). The US now probably resembles Brazil or Argentina more than it does Germany or Spain. The one western European country that shares much of the US’s dysfunction is the UK, but even it probably won’t produce a Trump. Here’s why the US is far more unstable than western Europe:

Inequality is much worse in the US. The country’s Gini coefficient after taxes and transfers (a good measure of inequality) is 0.394, higher than anywhere in western Europe, according to the OECD. The only western European country that approaches US inequality is Britain, as witness the disaster at London’s Grenfell tower block in wealthy Kensington. The UK also (unusually for Europe) has less social mobility than the US. [...]

The US is a plutocracy to a degree unimaginable in western Europe. One reason Republicans are trying to strip healthcare from about 22 million people despite a probable electoral backlash is to please Americans for Prosperity, the political vehicle of the billionaire Koch brothers. [...]

Western Europe’s media landscape is also less polarised than America’s, says the Reuters Institute’s recent Digital News Report. Most European countries have major media that are trusted by both rightists and leftists. These can be boring state broadcasters, or the Ansa news agency in Italy, or Germany’s centrist mass media, says the report. Consequently, few western Europeans inhabit ideological “filter bubbles”.

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New York Magazine: The Pope’s Pedophile?

But it all feels sickeningly familiar. And this denouement comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who has been following the sex-abuse crisis in the church — including Cardinal Pell’s own behavior — for the last few decades. A cloud has hung over Pell since he was an Episcopal vicar in a parish in the 1970s that has been described as a “pedophile’s paradise and a child’s nightmare.” A full 15 years ago, Pell was accused of molesting a 12-year-old boy but when the church investigated, a retired Supreme Court justice found that there wasn’t enough evidence, even though the victim appeared to be “speaking honestly from actual recollection.” A year later, Pope John Paul II made Pell a cardinal. Several new alleged victims spoke out in a book published only last month. [...]

It has not been easy being a Catholic in the 21st century. For a gay Catholic, it has been close to agony. It comes as no surprise, for example, that Pell has upheld, like Maciel, a highly conservative theology on sexuality — which was why he was so favored by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He opposed the use of condoms to stop AIDS in Africa, refused to give communion to openly gay people, campaigned strenuously against marriage equality, and described the church sex-abuse scandal as not a function of minor abuse and cover-up but of allowing homosexuals to be priests (a ban on gay seminarians remains formally in place). In his own words: “80 percent of the abuse is with young boys. So I mean it’s obviously connected with the problem of homosexuality … We’ve got to see that [homosexuality] is not tolerated amongst clergy and religious orders.” To which I have to echo David Ridsdale: “Fuck you, George, and everything you stand for.”

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The Guardian: Over 60% of voters view Theresa May as PM negatively – poll

Corbyn’s reinvigorated party is now on 45%, six points ahead of the Tories (on 39%), which if replicated in a general election would put Corbyn in a strong position to enter Downing Street as prime minister if one was called in the near future. [...]

On 9 April, May’s approval rating stood at an impressive +21% (where the percentage of those who disapprove of her leadership is subtracted from the number who approve) while that for Corbyn had sunk to -35%.

In an extraordinary turnaround, May’s rating is now at -20% (with 31% approving her leadership and 51% disapproving) while Corbyn’s has risen to +4% with more approving of his stewardship of Labour (42%) than disapproving (38%). [...]

May and Corbyn are now neck and neck when voters are asked who they believe would make the best prime minister, with 35% saying May and 34% Corbyn.

On Brexit, 41% now disapprove of the way May is handling the negotiations on leaving the EU, against 32% who approve. Some 47% of those who backed leaving the EU approve of her handling of Brexit against 27% who disapprove, while 56% of remainers disapprove and only 21% approve.

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Business Insider: Here's what it would take for Theresa May's majority to collapse

One Tory MP has become a deputy speaker, alongside two Labour MPs, depriving their respective parties of their votes. The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, also does not vote.

The seven Sinn Fein MPs who were voted in do not take their seats in Westminster by convention, as they refuse to swear an oath to the Queen due to their staunch republican beliefs.

This makes the task for the minority government slightly easier, as Sinn Fein would almost certainly voted against the Tories on a number of issues. [...]

Between 1992 and 1997 the Tory government under John Major suffered a net loss of eight seats through by-elections. This would be enough to give opposition parties a majority if replicated during this parliament.

In four out of the 19 parliaments since the Second World War governing parties have lost seven or more seats. In the period from 1966 to 1970 the Labour government had a net loss of 15 seats due to 20 sitting MPs dying, although this is extremely unlikely to happen this time around.

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